


goodbyes fade away

by bastaerd



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (bridgens' death), Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26657461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastaerd/pseuds/bastaerd
Summary: “Will you make me ask a third time, John?” he asks, and John’s lips pull into something resembling happiness as he shakes his head.“Yes, Henry, yes.”
Relationships: John Bridgens/Harry Peglar
Comments: 27
Kudos: 53





	goodbyes fade away

**Author's Note:**

> title, as well as peglar's vows, are keats' "sweet, sweet is the greeting of eyes."

Crozier sank to his knees. John-- either of them, really-- would never have presumed to ask this of him, to kneel beside a dying man for the second time in too short a period and maintain the face of a captain, but it had been Henry’s idea, and there was nothing he would not do for him. Next to nothing.

So he had gone, to the captain he had never served, prepared to make his case, to plead on his knees if that was what it took to convince him to agree. What he asked for would get him hanged, he was certain; that Henry would not swing was his only concern, though he knew that circumstances were dire enough that he may never get the chance to be tried and convicted. Either were too terrible to bear much thought. John went to the captain’s tent, announcing his presence by first peeling back the flap and then with a whispered, “Excuse me, sir.”

Crozier looked up, surprised at John's presence at his doorstep, and likely jumping over not so wide a gap to the conclusion that it was because the worst and the inevitable had happened. A glint of recognition flashed in his eyes, followed by what might have either been the echoes of grief, still present but no longer able to be indulged, or sympathetic understanding. He was on his feet at once, beckoning John into the tent with him, and the little slash of light that fell across the floor disappeared as the flap closed back after him.

“Captain,” John began. “We- the two of us-” because he could not bear to speak while the captain had that look in his eyes, the grief unwarranted now but that would have its place in the very near future- “we need to ask something of you.”

He paused for breath there, saw that grief go out of Crozier’s eyes and confusion replace it. At the same time, he found the words gone out of him, taking with them all his eloquence, his every thought that was not a bare repetition of Henry’s name.

“Marry us,” he said on a breath. “Please, captain. He… we-”

“Where is he?”

Crozier asked it with such quiet urgency that John could hardly believe it, as he had heard it. The question stopped him in his tracks, stopped the excuses ready on his tongue. If the captain could sense his shock, he said nothing to call it to attention. Instead, he grasped John’s hands, which had been lifted and pressed together, white palm to white palm and poised for begging, and squeezed them firmly.

“Is he in your tent?” he asked, eyebrows raised in that gentle way he had, paternal though John had some years on him. No doubt this caused him pain as it was causing John, but John was still in the throes of it, had yet to be in Crozier’s boots. If he had his druthers, those were shoes he would never find himself left to wear, not for long enough for the leather to mold to his feet. “He is, sir,” he told the captain, “follow me, sir,” and his footsteps were his own on the short walk to the little tent on the rocks.

* * *

_When it comes time for their vows, the captain goes quiet, sits back on his haunches a ways away to lend them both privacy and witness. Neither John nor Henry know which one of them is to recite theirs first, but Henry’s lips quirk up at one corner, and the sight of it alights in John an unsnuffable urge to speak._

_Grasping Henry’s hands, he says his vows in a whisper for only the two of them to hear. Thoughts come to mind of Achilles, his furious grief, but John’s too tired now for that rage, and too gentle ever, and grief has no place here yet. Instead, he speaks of their time on the water, and then on the ice. “I used to feel like Juliet on the balcony,” he tells Henry with a smile that springs tears in his eyes, not for sorrow but for the way it rounds his cheeks, “seeing you on Terror, on the masts, climbing the rigging like some swashbuckling hero. Every glimpse I caught of you, I’ve treasured-- collected for a horde of moments, guarded them like the most jealous dragon. I’m rich for them, Henry, for all the happiness you bring to me.”_

_Henry gives a soft exhalation, which John translates as_ You old soft heart, _and he fights the urge to kiss him until after they’re truly wed._

_“You’ve made me rich in love,” John says into the join of his right hand and Henry’s left. “I can only hope I’ve given you the same fortune.”_

_He’d like to say more-- though he isn’t sure what he wishes to say, he only knows that there’s unconscionably more that he hasn’t yet said. Wants to compose ballads and sonnets and odes, press them to the crook of Henry’s throat and speak them there where his heart beats. There’s very little he can say that Henry doesn’t already know; it’s Henry who speaks, now. He opens his mouth with the soft rasp of lips parting, breath escaping._

“Sweet, sweet is the greeting of eyes,” _he begins._

“And sweet is the voice in its greeting,

When adieus have grown old and goodbyes

Fade away where old Time is retreating.”

_John is beside Henry in his berth on Erebus, smelling of the last traces of silver polish he’s still unable to scrub off, and Henry smelling of salt and damp wool. Their foreheads rest together, they breathe each other’s breath._

“Warm the nerve of a welcoming hand,

And earnest a kiss on the brow,

When we meet over sea and o’er land

Where furrows are new to the plough.”

* * *

Henry was asleep when they entered, John before the captain, letting himself in first and kneeling to shake him awake by the shoulder. Then Crozier followed him inside, watching as Henry stirred, his sleep disturbed. John felt Crozier’s gaze on his back, weighty with mutual memory; ignored it, as he coaxed Henry to wakefulness and plied him with sweet words. “Did you sleep well, Henry,” he asked, knowing full well that between the pain and the fear Henry rarely did. He had never complained of it, but still. John knew, because Henry was perhaps more a part of him than John himself had ever been. They were etched onto each other’s souls, the both of them, and he imagined that when their bones were clean and warm, the men would find their names writ into the insides of their ribcages.

Henry opened his eyes, squeezed them shut again against the light. It was dim in their tent, with the faint sunlight struggling to reach them through the dense weave of the canvas. “Who’s that?”

“It’s the captain, Henry.”

Now, Henry showed a flash of missing teeth as he grinned. The captain smiled back. Doing so appeared to hurt.

“John said yes,” Henry said as they strained to hear him over his pained breathing. “Are we going to do this now?”

Crozier nodded, then spoke when he realized that Henry could not discern the movement of his head. “Unless you have a prior appointment to attend,” he replied, which made Henry cough the sound that John had come to recognize as his laughter.

Henry could not raise himself to sit, so John lay beside him, the two of them facing each other on the thin mattress. The back of Henry’s shirt was damp and discolored with old pus and new blood, and pulled as John helped to roll him onto his side. Once they got both settled, it was Henry who joined their hands in his fumbling grip. John held on tight enough for the both of them. The captain hovered by them, first at John’s side, but neither John nor Henry had eyes for anyone but each other, so it really did not matter where he stood. At last, he moved to the foot of their shared mattress, and sat there as if kneeling in church.

There was silence as he found his words for them. It took a moment, but John and Henry spent it lost in each other. This was the longest Henry had been able to keep his eyes open since his last day on the harness, and John gave his hands a squeeze, one and then the other, to tell him that he could close them if he so wished. His request for sleep would never be denied.

“These are no typical circumstances, and you are no typical men,” Crozier finally started. They could both hear the smile in his voice, as well as the pain. “Therefore I think we can dismiss the usual preamble. However, I think that the phrase _dearly beloved_ applies here, as in any other marriage.”

The ceremony went on, just them three in the tent, the mattress doing little to cushion their backs against the shale and the canvas floor doing even less for Crozier’s knees. It was more than John could have ever dreamed of or hoped for, because it existed-- he was in the middle of a possibility he had never entertained for himself. The gleam in Henry’s eyes was brighter than John had seen in days.

* * *

_“It doesn’t matter,” Henry tells him after they’ve both recovered themselves from their delirium of desperate happiness. They have taken as much joy as they can out of the moment like they’ll never have another, and while it’s much easier for Henry to do so-- to mine the vein of it unreservedly-- there is only so much he can take for himself. John grasps at all he can, but guiltily places some back, an angel’s share for his loved one who doesn’t have the strength to wrap his arms around the great dearth of it and steal._

_“That you’re old,” Henry goes on, without insult, only truth as he repeats John’s words. “It doesn’t… because that doesn’t matter here. You might as well be as young as I am.”_

Because I will die, _John hears in his next ugly breath,_ and you will live even after. _If there has ever been a living death sentence, it is this, a desert drier than any wind-scrubbed rock they make their camp on. He faces the remainder of his life deprived of all things that made it good; he thinks to himself that he will not survive living._

_“I will marry you,” he tells Henry. “Please. Don’t ask me for anything more than that, because I’ll give it to you.”_

_When Henry smiles next, his lips crack._

* * *

The ceremony went on some more. The captain spoke, but he was courteous enough not to keep them waiting, and John knew that he understood better than any other man there how precious each stolen second becomes. As with their food, they were down to their last handfuls now. They needed to find as much nutrition in them as they could. Henry’s mouth nudged blindly at John’s until his new husband steadied his head, pressed their lips against one another. It was wet with little more than blood, which John smelled under his nose but made no move to wipe away as stewardship would dictate. He wished to keep any little part of Henry offered him, even this kind, the kind which stains, the kind brought through pain rather than joy. As it was, he imagined it hurt him much more than it hurt Henry, who smiled through the fear, hauled through the hurt. He wished to apologize to him for it, for requiring him to shoulder it all for his own willful ignorance; he decided not to waste their dwindling time on clearing his own conscience.

Henry’s eyes had closed by now, and a thrill of fear ran through John from bottom to top of his spine. He gripped harder at Henry, felt for the slow puff of breath and the dirge of his pulse-- found it, thank god, and Henry opened his blood-dotted eyes. They wandered, not quite sure of anything but John.

“Did I drift off again?” he asked him, as if waking from a nap under some sunny window. John forced a laugh, managed an exhale that passed well enough for one, and kissed his cheek.

Sometime in all of this, the captain took his leave, slipped outside of the tent. John would thank him for the service he had done for them, but for the fact that doing so would take him away from Henry, and he could not. More than marriage tied them, and had always tied them as long as they had been parts of each other’s hearts. It did not matter to John how long or how short their husbandhood would last, because it guaranteed that he would always be something of Henry’s, even after him.

For now, they took their honeymoon. It was not much, just the two of them laying in the same position in which they had married each other, but it was more than this place had ever had to offer them. They made off like robbers with this, their stolen happiness. They built a house within it, made it their home, grew green parsley on the windowsill.

* * *

_“Marry me, John,” Henry whispers. The words inspire in John the bitter hope of a bird throwing itself against a window, striking itself to its own death against the glass. It’s not hope at all, he knows, but desperation._

_“Marry me, John.”_

_He drags in a shaking breath, and takes one of Henry’s hands between both of his own. He holds it tightly, trying to impart whatever warmth he can to it, to coax some life into the waxy fingers. Henry’s eyes are open just enough to see the greenish-gold of them but not enough to see how yellow his whites have gone. John takes that as invitation enough to ignore the ticking of the death clock._

_“I am old,” he reminds Henry, as he has reminded him more times before than he has fingers to count them on. The argument there has always been that Henry has more years ahead of him than John does, that being left behind like that is a pain John will not subject him to if he has any choice in it, but when he says it, he realizes-- not for the first time-- that he will gladly take that pain. He will gladly take that pain, because it’s something he can take, can hold in his hands and say_ This is what of Henry I have left, _and protect it from scattering to the wind._

_But Henry just smiles a wan smile at him, and once again John can pretend not to see how he searches for him in that instant, his eyes fogged from illness. “Will you make me ask a third time, John?” he asks, and John’s lips pull into something resembling happiness as he shakes his head._

_“Yes, Henry, yes.”_

* * *

Their marriage lasted for a day. John was a widower for two.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://edward-little.tumblr.com).


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